Second year theatre students from Middlesex University have been collaborating with Barnet’s Safe and Sustainable Travel team to deliver road safety workshops to local sixth form students.
The workshops were delivered at The Compton School earlier this month – and saw the university students relay the exact words spoken by people from Barnet affected by road traffic collisions.
The workshop included a quiz with the aim of engaging the sixth form pupils in facts around road safety, using this as a discussion point to explore risky behaviours such as not wearing seatbelts in a car and using mobile phones both as drivers and pedestrians.
The sixth form pupils were surprised by some of the trickier questions where they learnt that the new drivers caught using their mobile phone for the first time whilst driving could automatically lose their licence.
Pupils also learnt that overconfidence – rather than a lack of confidence assumed by many – is one of the contributing factors to young people involved in road traffic collisions.
The university students shared their own realisations gained by taking part in the project, one commenting on how it was “eye opening, a wake up call” and another using their own recent near-miss incident as part of the performance.
School staff from The Compton remarked on how some of the pupils carried on discussing road safety amongst themselves in the classroom. A member of the school pastoral team said: “I think the students found it really valuable and even as a mechanism to start a conversation about road safety is really positive.”
Meanwhile, the sixth form pupils commented on what they had learnt during the session including how being involved in a road traffic collision “affects you mentally and how it affects others around you”.
Others expressed how they need to be more cautious when driving with friends and the realisation they are not invincible. One pupil commented: “The fact that it happened in Barnet, It happened here. It can happen to anyone.”